PURIST: What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?
DON LEMON: Surviving/longevity
PURIST: What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
DL: Don’t take anything personally.
PURIST: Who has been the most challenging interview of your career?
DL: Any mother I’ve interviewed who has lost a child, whether it’s Trayvon’s mom or Michael Brown’s mom
PURIST: The most rewarding interview?
DL: Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Both interviews before they became president. I saw their potential to win before most people did.
PURIST: What does it take to speak truth to power?
DL: Courage/fearlessness
PURIST: What do you consider the most underrated quality in a person?
DL: Contentment/gratitude
PURIST: Quality you most deplore in others?
DL: Social and career climbing
PURIST: Motto to live by?
DL: Keep calm and carry on.
PURIST: Favorite word?
DL: No
PURIST: My favorite wellness practice is…
DL: Sleep
PURIST: The last good laugh I had was…
DL: I can’t say in public.
PURIST: The scariest thing about today’s political climate?
DL: People are vicious and now see reality through their political lens.
PURIST: One thing you’d change about America?
DL: Racism
PURIST: What drives you as a journalist?
DL: Curiosity and the truth
PURIST: Dream interview?
DL: The Obamas
PURIST: The most important question I’ve ever asked is…
DL: Who do you think you are?
PURIST: The most important thing I tell myself in doing this job is…
DL: Breathe.
PURIST: I start each day by…
DL: Thanking god for another day.
PURIST: Little-known fact about Chris Cuomo?
DL: He’s all bluster. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.
PURIST: Most important thing you’ve learned from Chris?
DL: Kindness.
PURIST: What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?
CHRIS CUOMO: My family
PURIST: What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
CC: Family first.
PURIST: What do you aspire to?
CC: Be the best person, parent and partner I can be.
PURIST: The most rewarding interview?
CC: The interview that has stuck with me the most is Mattie Stepanek, child poet. He is the only human I have ever interviewed who seemed proof that there is something bigger than what we understand on this Earth.
PURIST: What does it take to speak truth to power?
CC: A reckless sense of conviction
PURIST: What do you consider the most underrated quality in a person?
CC: Loyalty
PURIST: Quality you most deplore in others?
CC: Being stuck in the banal quest for “more.”
PURIST: Motto to live by?
CC: Let’s get after it.
PURIST: Favorite word?
CC: Happy
PURIST: I start each day by…
CC: Assessing what hurts most.
PURIST: My favorite wellness practice is…
CC: Working out, picking up heavy things and putting them back down.
PURIST: The last good laugh I had was…
CC: Hearing the president say, “As far as I’m concerned, I’m the least racist person in the world.”
PURIST: The scariest thing about today’s political climate?
CC: Division
PURIST: One thing you’d change about America?
CC: I wish people were more invested in recognizing and strengthening what makes this society unique. There is no other community in the world that is trying to do what we are experimenting with here. History is a cycle of people withdrawing into the familiar and attacking the foreign. America is the only place that was created to destroy the paradigm of separation of type…the melting pot is the best paradigm for humanity ever.
PURIST: What drives you as a journalist?
CC: Testing power
PURIST: Dream interview?
CC: My dream interview would be the ability to talk to myself as a teenager.
PURIST: The most important question I’ve ever asked is…
CC: Why?
PURIST: The most important thing I tell myself in doing this job is…
CC: it’s not about you.
PURIST: Little-known fact about Don Lemon?
CC: He’s actually Chinese.
PURIST: Most important thing learned from Don?
CC: To be yourself even when it’s not popular, even when people want to hold it against you. To thine own self be true.
Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo will be in conversation about the political climate and speaking truth to power on August 15 at 1PM.
